[House Hearing, 119 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
BALANCING THE FEDERAL BUDGET:
EXAMINING PROPOSALS FOR A BALANCED
BUDGET AMENDMENTS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION AND
LIMITED GOVERNMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2025
__________
Serial No. 119-41
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
62-173 WASHINGTON : 2026
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Chair
DARRELL ISSA, California JAMIE RASKIN, Maryland, Ranking
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona Member
TOM McCLINTOCK, California JERROLD NADLER, New York
THOMAS P. TIFFANY, Wisconsin ZOE LOFGREN, California
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
CHIP ROY, Texas HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr.,
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin Georgia
BEN CLINE, Virginia ERIC SWALWELL, California
LANCE GOODEN, Texas TED LIEU, California
JEFFERSON VAN DREW, New Jersey PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
TROY E. NEHLS, Texas J. LUIS CORREA, California
BARRY MOORE, Alabama MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania
KEVIN KILEY, California JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
HARRIET M. HAGEMAN, Wyoming LUCY McBATH, Georgia
LAUREL M. LEE, Florida DEBORAH K. ROSS, North Carolina
WESLEY HUNT, Texas BECCA BALINT, Vermont
RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina JESUS G. ``CHUY'' GARCIA, Illinois
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
BRAD KNOTT, North Carolina JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
MARK HARRIS, North Carolina DANIEL S. GOLDMAN, New York
ROBERT F. ONDER, Jr., Missouri JASMINE CROCKETT, Texas
DEREK SCHMIDT, Kansas
BRANDON GILL, Texas
MICHAEL BAUMGARTNER, Washington
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION AND LIMITED GOVERNMENT
CHIP ROY, Texas, Chair
TOM McCLINTOCK, California MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania,
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky Ranking Member
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
WESLEY HUNT, Texas PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
MARK HARRIS, North Carolina BECCA BALINT, Vermont
ROBERT F. ONDER, Jr., Missouri SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
BRANDON GILL, Texas DANIEL S. GOLDMAN, New York
CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Majority Staff Director
ARTHUR EWENCZYK, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
The Honorable Chip Roy, Chair of the Subcommittee on the
Constitution and Limited Government from the State of Texas.... 1
The Honorable Mary Gay Scanlon, Ranking Member of the
Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government from
the State of Pennsylvania...................................... 3
The Honorable Jim Jordan, Chair of the Committee on the Judiciary
from the State of Ohio......................................... 6
The Honorable Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on
the Judiciary from the State of Maryland....................... 6
WITNESSES
David M. Walker, Chair, Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation
Oral Testimony................................................. 8
Prepared Testimony............................................. 11
Kurt Couchman, Senior Fellow in Fiscal Policy, Americans for
Prosperity
Oral Testimony................................................. 22
Prepared Testimony............................................. 24
Brittany Madni, Executive Vice President, Economic Policy
Innovation Center
Oral Testimony................................................. 34
Prepared Testimony............................................. 36
Brendan Duke, Senior Director for Federal Fiscal Policy, Center
for Budget and Policy Priorities
Oral Testimony................................................. 46
Prepared Testimony............................................. 48
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC. SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
All materials submitted by the Subcommittee on the Constitution
and Limited Government, for the record......................... 82
Materials submitted by the Honorable Becca Balint, a Member of
the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government
from the State of Vermont, for the record
A tweet from Kurt Couchman regarding aluminum tariffs, Jun.
4, 2025
A tweet from Kurt Couchman regarding inflation and tariffs,
May 30, 2024
A tweet from Erick Erickson regarding tariffs, Nov. 4, 2025
An article entitled, ``How DOGE's Cuts to the IRS Threaten to
Cost More Than DOGE Will Ever Save,'' Mar. 5, 2025, ProPublica,
submitted by the Honorable Mary Gay Scanlon, Ranking Member of
the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government
from the State of Pennsylvania, for the record
BALANCING THE FEDERAL BUDGET:
EXAMINING PROPOSALS FOR A BALANCED
BUDGET AMENDMENT
----------
Wednesday, December 3, 2025
House of Representatives
Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government
Committee on the Judiciary
Washington, DC
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:09 a.m., in
Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Hon. Chip Roy
[Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Roy, Jordan, McClintock, Massie,
Hageman, Grothman, Harris, Onder, Gill, Scanlon, Raskin,
Jayapal, Neguse, Balint, and Kamlager-Dove.
Also present: Representative Schmidt.
Mr. Roy. The Subcommittee will come to order. Without
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at any
time.
We welcome everyone to today's hearing on balancing the
Federal budget. I will now recognize myself for an opening
statement.
Today, our national debt is at $38 trillion and counting.
In the time it took me to read that first sentence, the debt
increased by over $200,000. By this time tomorrow, we'll add $6
billion more. By any calculation, our Nation's debt is
staggering.
For generations, politicians here in Washington have
shunned hard conversations about spending, choosing to max out
our national credit card and leaving the next generation to
foot the bill. Families across our Nation have to balance their
budgets, and there's no reason their elected leaders shouldn't
as well.
Americans know that debt comes with strings attached. It's
no different for government. Every dollar we spend beyond our
means today is a dollar and change we must repay tomorrow. The
more America borrows, the more expensive every next borrowed
dollar becomes. Indeed, annual Federal spending on interest,
the price we pay for the last generation's fiscal indiscretion,
is now one of the largest line items we have in the budget. We
spend more on interest than we do on national defense. We spend
more on interest than we do on Medicare. Republicans and
Democrats will have different policy ideas and priorities, but
surely, we can agree that a budget hamstrung by huge interest
payments benefits nobody.
Our fiscal trajectory is alarming and unsustainable. Make
no mistake, a reckoning will come. Indeed, America is already
long down the road to a debt crisis. Financial markets have
already grown--shown grave concerns about America's long-term
debt load. Higher than expected interest rates or other
challenges could trigger a debt spiral. It's happened to other
countries throughout history. It could happen to us, and
without changes, it will happen to us.
When that day of reckoning comes, it will be ugly. Spending
cuts will be drastic and immediate, instead of targeted and
phased in over a longer period. Massive tax hikes will take
money out of your pocket, not to fund new services, but to pay
for services already rendered. It is a matter of when, not if,
unless we make changes now while we still can.
That's why we're having a hearing today about a balanced
budget amendment. A balanced budget amendment would be a
possible tool to beat back a future fiscal crisis. It could
reduce the cost of living here and now.
The enormous Federal debt load is already driving up
borrowing costs for all Americans--your mortgage, your car
payment, and your student loans. We saw the disastrous effects
of budget busting deficit spending during the catastrophic four
years of the previous administration.
With the eager support of my Democratic colleagues in
Congress, the Biden-Harris Administration approved $4.7
trillion in new deficit spending, racking up $8.5 trillion in
new debt. Now, we have the worst inflation in 40 years.
When Biden and Harris took office in January 2021,
inflation was at just 1.4 percent, and by the middle of their
term, it was over nine percent. Inflation is a tax on everyone,
but we all know who it hurts the most: The poor, the working
class, seniors on fixed incomes, and American families who saw
their expenses explode, but no similar increase in their
salaries.
A balanced budget amendment is a long-debated tool that, if
properly structured, could limit Washington's inflationary
overspending and ensure that future Federal outlays are funded
with actual revenue, not debt and money printing. Indeed, a
balanced budget amendment could build on the work we started
with the One Big Beautiful Bill. We fought hard to ensure that
we kept our promises of fiscal discipline.
A balanced budget amendment could force Congress to kick
the habit of spending money we don't have once and for all. I
hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will join us
in calling for a full debate and full consideration of a
balanced budget amendment to get our fiscal house in order.
Believe it or not, there's a long history of Democrats
supporting balanced budget amendments, including former
California Governor Jerry Brown. I hope that's still the case
today. Let's have a good and honest debate on various
proposals.
Some proposals allow Congress to approve deficit spending
only by a supermajority vote and some delay the amendments'
effective date to allow for a softer landing. I hope that we'll
explore these finer points today with our expert panel.
The concept of a balanced budget amendment is simple and
powerful. It's important that we get the details right. Many
States have requirements that they must balance their budgets.
The Federal Government should be similarly situated.
I will note, and I know some of my colleagues on both sides
of the aisle will raise appropriately the question that, if you
have a balanced budget amendment with exceptions, will Congress
not drive a truck through those exceptions just as they
currently do every time we vote on a debt ceiling increase? I
say that to say that I'm not here to say that a balanced budget
amendment is a panacea for irresponsible Members of Congress on
both sides of the aisle that continue to blow our budget to
smithereens. We have to have responsibility in Congress, and a
balanced budget amendment will not make up for irresponsible
Members of Congress who will exploit any loophole to spend
money that we don't have and mortgage our children's future.
The reason we're here to talk about a balanced budget
amendment is because something has to change. If we're going to
do something, structure it properly. If we're going to do
something, do something to actually put brakes on what Congress
does.
That's what I hope we will debate today and have a full
conversation about, because we've been talking about a balanced
budget amendment for years, but every year, or every other
year, or every few years, we literally disregard the current
limit on our spending when we lift the debt ceiling, and we do
it with regularity and with impunity.
Whatever we do today, whatever discussion we have today,
whatever debate we have on a balanced budget amendment, let's
recognize that we're $38 trillion in the hole with no end in
sight.
We should have a full debate on this and I look forward to
having a discussion about a balanced budget amendment. With
that, I will yield to the Ranking Member for her opening
statement.
Ms. Scanlon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to our
witnesses for testifying today.
It's an interesting topic and one that has, certainly, at
least superficial appeal, but the devil as always is in the
details.
The decisions that Congress makes about the economy, about
taxes, spending and budgets, are or should be decisions about
our values, who we're fighting for, what kind of country we are
or want to be, and the future we're trying to create for our
children, which brings us to the topic of today's hearing--a
balanced budget constitutional amendment, which at least in the
proposals we've seen so far, seems to be a misguided proposal
about how to address the often competing values and interests
that have to be taken into account when crafting our national
budget.
We all share the goal of developing smart, efficient fiscal
policies in budgets, but for decades, Republican Presidents and
Members of Congress have talked a big game about fiscal
responsibility while enacting policies that have exploded the
Federal deficit and the national debt.
It wasn't that long ago--not generations, as the Chair
suggested--but only about 25 years when under the Clinton
Administration, the U.S. had a balanced budget for multiple
years, fueled in part by a combination of tax increases,
spending cuts, and reduced military spending. Since then, in
the early 2000s, and again during the first Trump
Administration, Republicans have handed the ultra-wealthy huge
tax breaks, eroding the Federal Government's revenue base and
threatening our ability to fund essential programs that
Americans rely on.
Time and again these policies have failed to produce the
broader benefits for all Americans that the advocates of
trickled down economics have promised, and instead these
Republican policies have exploded the deficit, adding $10
trillion to the national debt.
Despite this, this summer, Republicans once again doubled
down permanently extending the Trump tax giveaways from his
first administration, extending those giveaways to the wealthy
in their one big ugly bill, further expanding the deficit and
ballooning the national debt, as was just noted.
Now, after voting for that policy, our Republican
colleagues are making a show of caring about fiscal
responsibility, but don't be fooled, today's hearing is part of
a decades-long orchestrated political effort to help
corporations and the wealthiest people avoid paying their fair
share. It's based on a theory that tries to convince people
that reckless tax giveaways to the ultra-wealthy somehow
stimulate investment and economic growth for everyone for the
greater good. That's a lie that's been debunked again and again
and again, for more than 50 years now, and one that's led to
sky-high income inequality and the enshrinement of a corporate
oligarchy in our society.
These tax policies, these giveaways have fueled the
greatest rise in income inequality that our country has known,
at least since the robber baron days, resulting in a continuing
transfer of wealth from working and middle-class Americans to
the wealthiest among us. We need look no further than the fact
that the top one percent in our country pay a lower tax rate
than all other Americans. This pathological dedication to
trickle-down economics is outrageous. It betrays the values
this country should stand for and which our budget should
reflect.
If we want to shrink the deficit and lower the Nation's
debt, we should be talking about a tax policy that gives relief
to working families and makes the rich and corporations pay
their fair share, rather than allowing them to reap even more
profits by imposing the costs of their business on the American
people, whether by paying substandard wages that force workers
to rely on food stamps or subsidized healthcare to survive, or
to force Americans to pick up the cost of industrial waste,
dangerous products, or unsafe working conditions.
A tax policy that makes sure that everyone pays their fair
share isn't a radical idea and should be the starting point of
any serious discussion about bringing the two sides of the
budget equation--taxes and revenue on the one hand, spending,
including military spending, on the other. It takes a different
kind of politics than what we are hearing today, one that
believes that the purpose of government is to serve all
Americans, not just the wealthy and well-connected.
The programs that our Republican colleagues have been only
too ready to slash in their big ugly bill and with the
political scam of a balanced budget amendment that they're
pushing here, these programs are critical to the health and
well-being of the American people.
The majority of our yearly spending is mandatory, that is
funds not subject to congressional appropriation and which must
be paid, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security,
veterans benefits, retirement programs for military service
members, and retired Federal employees. These are vital
programs that help our government keep its promises to the
American people. Less than half our budget goes to
discretionary spending, which is spending that Congress
appropriates every year, and half of that money goes to defense
spending.
We can make sure our national debt is on a sustainable path
by investing wisely in the American people and taxing fairly.
We can work to build an economy that grows from the middle out,
not the top down. We can provide affordable healthcare and
childcare, affordable housing, and make sure that every child
gets a world-class public education, but that's not the focus
of today's hearing.
Instead, the solution to the deficit problem they helped
create is to propose constitutional amendments that force
Congress to balance the budget on the backs of working and
middle-class families, forcing cuts to essential benefits like
Medicare and Social Security.
House Republicans have introduced at least six different
proposed balanced budget amendments. Though they don't all
share the same features, they have the same common goal: To
continue to put their thumb on the scale to favor big business
and billionaires over working and middle-class people, seniors,
and our most vulnerable Americans.
A balanced budget amendment would shackle Congress and
limit our flexibility to respond to changing economic
conditions or crises with appropriate fiscal and budgetary
policies.
As the Chair mentioned, many of these proposals would
require a supermajority in Congress to raise revenue or raise
the debt limit but not to cut spending. The Framers of our
Constitution rejected the principle of requiring a
supermajority for basic government functions because they
believed it would shift power away from the American people's
popular will to a determined minority.
Balanced budget proposals requiring a supermajority would
allow an extremist minority to hold our Nation's economy and
financial stability hostage. You only need to look at the chaos
of the current Republican majority in the House to see what
might be in store under such a proposed amendment. We've seen
political brinks-manship over the debt ceiling and government
funding. We've seen Speakers dethroned, and Federal budgets
that slash healthcare and food assistance for Americans, while
giving more handouts to billionaires and big business.
A balanced budget amendment would only make things worse,
and this dysfunction would then be baked into our Constitution
and democracy. I don't think that's what the American people
want or need.
The bottom line is we don't need to amend the Constitution
to balance the Federal budget. Our colleagues need to get their
heads out of the sand and be willing to look at the revenue
side of the equation.
During the nineties, under a Democratic President and a
Republican-controlled Congress, the Federal Government ran
budget surpluses without a balanced budget amendment. Our
Republican colleagues control the House, the Senate, and the
White House; if they wanted to do this, they could. Instead,
they've chosen to make their No. 1 legislative priority this
year a trillion-dollar handout to their billionaire buddies.
Our budget is not just numbers on a spreadsheet. It's the
choices we make to invest in our neighbors, our communities, to
provide opportunities for young people, to take care of the
elderly and the most vulnerable, and to invest in American
prosperity. If we really want a prosperous economy where
everyone can get ahead, we need to abandon the misguided
orthodoxy of trickle-down economics. Instead, we need to focus
on policies that support children, family, communities, and our
wider economy.
We don't need a balanced budget. We just need Congress to
do the job the American people sent us to do.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I yield back.
Mr. Roy. I thank the Ranking Member.
I will now recognize the Chair of the Full Committee, Mr.
Jordan, for his opening statement.
Chair Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be brief.
The Ranking Member just said, and I quote, ``a balanced
budget amendment would shackle Congress.'' I think there are
30-some trillion reasons why that might not be a bad idea,
frankly, and that's what this is about. She also said that the
answer is to increase revenue, better known as raise taxes.
That seems crazy to me as well.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. I appreciate
the Chair for having this hearing. I yield back.
Mr. Roy. I thank Chair Jordan. I will now recognize the
Ranking Member of the Full Committee, Mr. Raskin, for his
opening statement.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Chair Roy. Thanks to our witnesses
for joining us today.
Our Republican colleagues have convened this hearing to
discuss a constitutional change to solve a problem that they
have created legislatively, which is gigantic runaway Federal
budget deficits.
We don't need a constitutional amendment to legislatively
balance the budget. We just need some old-fashioned fiscal
discipline.
In the 1990s, President Clinton worked with a Republican-
controlled Congress to eliminate the deficit, and they ran huge
surpluses without the aid of a contrived balanced budget
constitutional amendment or even rhetoric about a balanced
budget amendment. They just did it.
Why can't Republicans who control the House of
Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and the White House do the
exact same thing today with control of every part of the
government? If they want to balance the budget, just do it.
They could just take action on their own to make the hard
decisions. Instead, they say, no, the real problem is we need
to go out and get two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the
Senate and three-quarters of the States to do it, instead of
just passing it by a Majority in the House, in the Senate, and
in the White House. Obviously, they lack the political will or
the fiscal discipline to do it.
They think that maybe they can distract everybody now with
this extremely stale and tired rhetoric about passing a
constitutional amendment. We can't even get reporters to come
and cover this charade anymore. They're practicing spectacular
fiscal irresponsibility and budget recklessness, and then try
to cover it up with the pathetic paper mache of a balanced
budget amendment.
The problem of ballooning deficits returns whenever
Republicans enjoy complete control of the political branches.
This is one of the great ironies of our political rhetoric.
When they are in control, the budget deficits are sore. It's
the Democrats who always bring the deficits down.
They pass giant giveaways for wealthy corporations and
billionaires. It was the policies of President George W. Bush
and the GOP Congress that squandered the record budget
surpluses of the Clinton years in the 1990s on tax cuts for the
wealthy, even as the country was waging the staggeringly
expensive no-end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2017, President Trump and a Republican Congress passed
the so-called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a law that increased the
Federal deficit by $1.9 trillion. This year they passed the
obscenely ugly profligate law which will add a jaw-dropping $4
trillion to the national debt because of its giveaways for
corporations with political insider influence and billionaires,
at the same time that they're stripping health insurance and
food assistance from tens of millions of Americans to offset
just a small part of the enormous cost of the tax breaks that
they cut for wealthy elites.
We don't need to start finger painting on the Constitution
to accomplish what our colleagues in the Majority simply don't
have the political discipline and will to do.
You wanted a balanced budget, present a balanced budget and
pass it. After voting for the most reckless recent increase in
Federal spending, it's just, to me, way too little or way too
late to have one more hearing on the idea of a balanced budget
constitutional amendment. Something, by the way, which no other
country in the world, or maybe it's a handful, but the vast
majority of countries in the world don't need this to run their
fiscal systems.
I yield back to you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Roy. I thank Ranking Member Raskin.
Without objection, all other opening statements will be
included in the record. We will now introduce today's
witnesses.
The Honorable David M. Walker. Mr. Walker is the Chair of
the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation, a nonprofit
organization that supports statutory and constitutional
approaches to fiscal responsibility. He previously served as
the Comptroller General of the United States, public trustee
for Social Security and Medicare, and is the Chair of the
Independent Audit Advisory Committee for the United Nations.
Mr. Kurt Couchman. Mr. Couchman is a Senior Fellow in
fiscal policy at Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit
organization that advocates for economic opportunity, fiscal
responsibility, and limited government. His work focuses on
solutions to Federal and State budget and government
challenges. He previously worked for the Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget, as well as several other
nonprofits, and is a House staffer.
Ms. Brittany Madni. Ms. Madni is the Executive Vice
President of the Economic Policy Innovation Center, a nonprofit
organization that advocates for policies that promote freedom
and prosperity. Prior to joining EPIC, she served in a variety
of roles with Members of the House and with the House Budget
Committee.
Mr. Brendan Duke. Mr. Duke is the Senior Director for
Federal fiscal policy at the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities, a nonprofit organization that advocates policies
that expand economic opportunity and health security. He
previously served as a Senior Policy Advisor on the National
Economic Council in the Biden-Harris Administration.
We thank our witnesses for appearing today, and we'll begin
by swearing you in. Would you please rise and raise your right
hand.
Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the
testimony you are about to give is true and correct to the best
of your knowledge, information, and belief, so help you God?
Let the record reflect that the witnesses have answered in
the affirmative.
Thank you. You're already seated.
Please know that your written testimony will be entered
into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, we ask that you
summarize your testimony in five minutes.
A reminder that you have your microphones on before you
begin. With that, Mr. Walker, you may begin.
STATEMENT OF DAVID M. WALKER
Mr. Walker. Chair Roy, Ranking Member Scanlon, the Members
of the Constitution Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity
to testify on this important issue today.
Let me start at the outset, the Federal Government's
financial condition is much worse than advertised. Many people
focus on the level of Federal debt which now exceeds $38
trillion; however, the debt is just the tip of our financial
iceberg.
Total Federal liabilities and unfunded obligations exceed
$125 trillion and are growing faster than the economy. Our
current level of debt to GDP is 123 percent, which is greater
than the end of World War II, but the difference is, is at the
end of World War II, it was coming down, now it's going up.
Today, over 75 percent of the annual budget is on
autopilot, mandatory spending. We've written a blank check. In
addition, net interest is now the second largest and fastest
growing expense in the Federal budget for which we get nothing.
In my view, we must adopt a fiscal responsibility
constitutional amendment if we want to restore and sustain
fiscal sanity over time. A constitutional amendment is the only
way to force Congress and the President to make the tough
choices needed on both sides of the ledger to reduce overall
debt burdens to a reasonable lower level of debt to GDP over
the next 10-15 years and have mechanisms in place to make sure
that we do not spin out of control again.
There are several approaches to taking--to deal with that
constitutional need. Some advocate for a traditional balanced
budget approach by the ones--like the ones employed by the
States. Others advocate for a principle-based balanced budget
approach designed to achieve balance over a stated period of
time. I and others prefer a debt-to-GDP-based approach, which
is progrowth and does not dictate to the Congress how to solve
the numerator challenge, but it says you've got to solve it.
The latter two approaches have been used successfully by other
countries. Importantly, irrespective of the approach that is
employed, it must contain very limited exceptions and effective
enforcement mechanisms.
As you know, there are two ways to achieve a constitutional
amendment under Article V of the Constitution. Two-thirds of
the House and Senate can pass an identical proposed approach,
and three-quarters of the States must ratify it. Alternatively,
two-thirds of the States can file an application for a
convention of States to propose one or more amendments to the
Constitution, and Article V says the Congress shall call the
convention. It is nondiscretionary, ministerial duty, and then
if the States can come up with an amendment, then three-
quarters of the States have to ratify it.
The Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation, which I
Chair, discovered over three years ago that enough States had
filed applications for a convention dedicated solely to
proposing a fiscal responsibility amendment as far back as
1979. Enough applications existed for 25 years, and most
recently in 2016 and 2017, and yet Congress failed to call the
convention.
Shockingly, the Congress never assigned responsibility to
any party to receive, store, and count the applications until
January 2015, when it was assigned to this Committee. To this
Committee's credit, it began steps to update its records
earlier this year. The National federalism Commission, which is
an official interstate governmental body, worked with the
Committee to bring its records up to date and they issued a
report on Constitution Day of this year, which confirms what
our foundation found, that there--enough applications existed,
Congress should have called a convention many, many years ago.
That was attended by Chair Jodey Arrington, Budget Committee
Chair; the Hon. Bruce Lee, who is with us here today, who's
head of the National federalism Commission, and I spoke at that
press briefing.
Mr. Chair, with your permission, I would like to enter into
the record the National Federalism Commission's report and an
illustrative call resolution.
Mr. Roy. Without objection.
Mr. Walker. Thank you.
The H.C.R. 15, which is sponsored by House Budget Committee
Chair Jodey Arrington, is designed to right this wrong and to
call the related limited convention. I expect the States will
sue, if the Congress fails to act within a reasonable period of
time. This issue would then have to be addressed by the Supreme
Court. If that happens, it would be the biggest federalism case
in the history of this great Nation.
In closing, let me be clear, in my view, we must adopt a
constitutional amendment if we want to restore and sustain
fiscal sanity at the Federal level. If the Congress can achieve
the necessary support to pass a credible proposed amendment,
then it should do so in a timely manner. If not, Congress needs
to call a limited convention to propose a fiscal responsibility
amendment and allow the States to exercise their constitutional
right under Article V. Doing nothing is not an option.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walker follows:]
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Mr. Roy. Thank you, Mr. Walker, for your testimony. Mr.
Couchman, you may begin.
STATEMENT OF KURT COUCHMAN
Mr. Couchman. Chair Roy, Ranking Member Scanlon, and the
Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to discuss
balanced budget amendments to the Constitution and related
statutory upgrades. I am a Senior Fellow in fiscal policy at
Americans for Prosperity. We are the premier grassroots
advocacy organization transforming policy around the country to
empower every American to pursue their version of the American
Dream.
Congress should be the Federal Government's premier
policymaking body. The best practices I'll discuss, including a
BBA, are neutral, practical tools to help Congress improve
budgeting, governance, and the exercise of legislative powers
generally.
Weak Federal budgeting hurts us: Higher inflation and
interest rates, lower worker pay, polarized politics, and the
risks of debt crisis and default. The budget process is usually
just something to survive, not a robust and inclusive framework
for considering tradeoffs.
Many countries and U.S. States have gotten into debt
trouble and got back out with policies to reduce borrowing and
with better governance, including debt constraints. Nearly all
U.S. States and prosperous countries now have balanced budget
rules.
I'll discuss BBA design, statutory complements, and how the
House passed a BBA in 1995.
Most constitutional provisions are broad principles.
Congress applies those principles to modern circumstances
through normal legislation. Any new provision should apply
indefinitely as well. Annual balance is the original sin of
most BBA proposals. Revenue varies a lot from year to year, so
locked-in spending, especially outlays to revenue, would mean
major uncertainty or, more likely, push Congress to waive the
rules a lot. Many BBAs try to compensate for annual balance but
create other problems.
A simpler BBA, such as the principles-based BBA from
Representative Moran and Senator Husted, may attract the most
consensus. It would first require balance, quote, ``which may
occur over more than one year''; second, let two-thirds of
Congress approve emergency spending; and third, allow 10 years
to reach full or primary balance after ratification.
Primary balance requires about half as much deficit
reduction as full balance. Implementing legislation for a
principles-based BBA could start with Representative Emmer and
then-Senator Braun's Responsible Budget Targets Act to support
stable, predictable, neutral and flexible policymaking.
It would set up annual revenue-linked spending targets for
structural primary balance, balance in the budget, except
interest over the medium term. Emergency spending would usually
be offset over the following six years. The spending caps would
adjust for automatic stabilizers, revenue changes, and more.
Automatic enforcement would help Congress stay the course.
Instead of the ineffective sequester model, however, a more
sophisticated incremental approach would be more reasonable,
politically sustainable, and binding. A real budget that
includes all the Committees and empowers all Members would help
Congress meet targets and do so much more. In addition to
appropriators diligently stewarding their 26 percent of
spending, 16 Committees responsible for direct spending and
revenue, including this one, could manage their portfolios as
well.
Representative Blake Moore's Comprehensive Congressional
Budget Act is a roadmap to effective annual budgeting. Finally,
Representative Arrington and Panetta's Prevent Government
Shutdowns Act would support a more bottom-up Congress that can
more easily trim the fat.
In 1995, the House of Representatives passed, and the
Senate nearly passed, an annual balanced BBA. The special rule
for the House floor set up a queen-of-the-hill competition. The
most popular BBA would be the text for final passage.
Substitute amendments began with more ideological versions and
finished with the consensus BBA that passed 300-132. Despite
flaws, it failed by just one vote in the Senate. Better BBAs
exist now, and reviving BBA competition on the House floor can
show the way forward. A well-crafted BBA would encourage sound
budgeting and would help Congress take up the additional tools
to strengthen fiscal democracy.
Thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts, and
I look forward to the discussion.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Couchman follows:]
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Mr. Roy. Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Couchman. Ms.
Madni, you may begin.
STATEMENT OF BRITTANY MADNI
Ms. Madni. Chair Roy, Ranking Member Scanlon, the Members
of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify
today.
It is a particular honor to be before this Subcommittee
given the critical moment in our Nation's conscience when we
are called on to address a growing fiscal crisis that threatens
our constitutional prerogatives.
We are $38.4 trillion in debt. To put this into context,
our debt translates to approximately $288,000 per household
across America. More than 60 percent of this total occurred
over the past 18 years. We've added more debt during and since
the Obama Administration than over the prior 2.5 centuries,
including the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and two World
Wars. This is wildly unsustainable.
Our Founding Fathers would be aghast. They just fought a
war because the Kingdom of Great Britain didn't know how to
balance its books, and mad King George wrongly thought that the
solution would be to raise taxes on the colonies. I'll spoil
the story for you; it didn't end well for the British or the
tea drinkers.
What the Founding Fathers learned in a tangible way is that
debt is dangerous. It is dangerous because it removes the
ability of the government to adjust in times of need or respond
to an existential threat. It leads to squeezing the pocketbooks
of the people beyond reason. It is inflationary.
It is dangerous, perhaps most interestingly to the
Subcommittee, because it implies that government has gotten so
large, so unwieldy, so involved in people's daily lives that
the only way to sustain it is to bankrupt future generations,
not only through excessive taxation, but through excessive
intervention in personal lives.
I want to tie the Committee's constitutional jurisdiction
to its limited government jurisdiction by encouraging Members
to think holistically about a balanced budget amendment, not
just as a means of balancing the budget on paper or staving off
the debt crisis my colleague Dr. Paul Winfree warned us is
coming, but, most importantly, of making government spending
match the people's priorities. This is inherently American, and
it's inherently tied to the principles of limited government
and individual liberty.
We all know the Federal budget is bloated. It's rife with
waste, fraud, and abuse. For example, GAO recently reported
that the Federal Government has made nearly $3 trillion in
improper payments since 2003. Over the past decade, we estimate
that Medicaid alone issued more than $1 trillion in improper
payments.
Not all government waste--spending is blatantly corrupt,
wasteful, or fraudulent, though. Much of it is just not
necessary, which means it's not necessary for Congress to take
money from the American workers to fund.
Is every dollar the Federal Government spends improving
individual liberty within the bounds of limited government?
This is a foundational budget question Madison reminds us to
consider in Federalist 41.
According to the Federal Register, there are 444 Federal
agencies right now all funded by the taxpayer. Not only does
all that spending come out of Americans' paychecks, it often
works against them with regulations and distortionary
government subsidies. Given the purpose of our mission, balance
must be designed for the sake of the people, not simply as an
accounting mechanism. This year the Federal Government will
take $5.2 trillion in revenues from the American people and
spend $7 trillion, passing $1.9 trillion in debt to future
taxpayers.
A major part of the problem is that mandatory spending has
grown from 33 percent of outlays in 1964 to 73 percent in 2024.
That means Congress does not actually review 73 percent of what
it spends each year. It's on autopilot and it's unacceptable.
The cost of our debt is rising exponentially. Interest
payments this year will equal $1.22 trillion, or $9,200 per
household. Our $1.22 trillion interest payment is larger than
the GDP of most countries. It is about the size of Saudi
Arabia's entire economy. Our debt is out of control because
spending is beyond reason. A balanced budget amendment would
require lawmakers to regularly examine whether spending matches
Americans' priorities or not.
Why do I believe a balanced budget amendment is necessary?
Because I was here a decade ago as a staffer, bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed, believing we could get this done. I was wrong.
In early 2016, I was working for a Member of the
Subcommittee, Mr. McClintock. He charged me with working on a
memo on ways to restore budget discipline. I would like to read
to you from that memo that he published in 2016 and sent to his
colleagues. He said, ``The budget now before us''--remember,
this is 2016--``spends $1.07 trillion and balances in 2026, but
only if we summon the discipline to stick to the budget in
future years that has alluded us again this year.'' Maintaining
budget discipline becomes particularly crucial given the
deteriorating economic picture.
Well, Congress certainly did not maintain budget
discipline. It's 2026, and our deficit is not zero dollars but
$2 trillion.
A balanced budget amendment is an important safeguard for
Congress to consider building into the Constitution itself. You
should consider three main priorities when doing so: (1) Do not
abdicate your Article I powers; (2) remember that we have a
spending problem, not a revenues problem; and (3) it must have
an effective enforcement mechanism.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Madni follows:]
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Mr. Roy. Thank you for your testimony, Ms. Madni. Mr. Duke,
you may begin.
STATEMENT OF BRENDAN DUKE
Mr. Duke. Thank you, Chair Roy, Ranking Member Scanlon, and
the Members of the Subcommittee. My name is Brendan Duke, and I
am the Senior Director for Federal Budget Policy at the Center
on Budget and Policy Priorities. CBPP is a nonpartisan research
and policy institute that advances Federal and State policies
to help build a Nation where everyone has the resources they
need to thrive and share the Nation's prosperity.
Any constitutional amendment to require annual balanced
budgets would be highly ill-advised and a risky way to address
the Nation's long-term fiscal problems. It would threaten
significant economic harm while raising a host of problems for
Social Security and Medicare.
Let me first begin with an overview of our fiscal outlook.
Analyses typically focus on government spending and revenue as
shares of the economy. In 2024, revenue was 17 percent of GDP,
which is around the same level as in 1984. Programmatic
spending, on the other hand, has grown 1.5 percentage points
since 1984. Social Security and Medicare are responsible for
more than 100 percent of the increase in spending because the
country has gotten older. That's nobody's fault. I'm sure
everyone on this Committee wishes they had the same knees or
back they did 40 years ago. Similarly, we all wish we had the
same demographics in ratio of working-age Americans to retirees
that we had 40 years ago, but we don't.
The combination of population aging and basic arithmetic
means we will face a choice between raising revenue past the 17
percent of GDP levels set when the country was much younger or
making drastic cuts to programs. The past several months has
shown how much harm would be caused to vulnerable Americans and
how difficult it would be if the government relied solely on
massive spending cuts to balance the budget.
The Trump administration has attempted, often illegally, to
close whole agencies, engaged in mass layoffs, and refused to
spend congressionally appropriated funds with little or no
savings to show for it. Similarly, the giant mega bill passed
this summer adds $3.4 trillion to the deficit as it extends tax
cuts tilted to the wealthy, despite cutting SNAP and Medicaid
by about 20 percent by 2034. This will cause millions of low-
income families to lose the ability to afford the high cost of
groceries or go to the doctor when they're sick, cuts that a
vast majority of the public staunchly opposes.
The retirement of the baby boom was a predictable and
predicted development, but at the beginning of the 21st
century, we had a fiscal system that would deliver adequate
projected revenue to meet our needs. Rounds of unpaid-for tax
cuts ruined that.
Take a look at CBO projections for 2025 that were made
right before most of the Bush tax cuts were made permanent in
2012, and before anyone even thought of the Trump tax cuts, and
compare them to the actual 2025 values. The 2025 deficit is
much higher than projected in 2012, despite programmatic
spending being lower than projected. The reason the deficit
rose is revenues came in far lower than projected as a result
of those unpaid-for tax cuts. Importantly, Social Security,
Medicare, and other health programs, such as Medicaid and
premium tax credits, also came in below CBO's 2012 projections.
What all this ultimately shows is it's entirely possible to
meet our commitments to seniors while ensuring millions of low-
and moderate-income Americans have healthcare and can afford
food if we are willing to raise the revenue to do so.
The most serious concern about a balanced budget amendment,
aside from any cuts to critical programs, is it would
exacerbate and prolong recessions. During economic downturns,
consumers and businesses spend less, which in turn causes
further job loss. The drop in tax collections and increases in
unemployment insurance and other benefits that occur
automatically cushion the blow to the overall economy and
individuals involved by keeping purchases of goods and services
from falling more.
A constitutional balanced budget amendment, however,
effectively suspends this automatic stabilization. That would
launch a vicious spiral. A weak economy would lead to higher
deficits, forcing more spending cuts and tax heights, which
would weaken the economy further. It would also be
unconstitutional for Social Security and Medicare to draw down
their reserves to pay promised benefits without running a
surplus in the rest of the government, because that's still
deficit spending, spending money that was not collected in the
same year, so we would immediately likely face their funding
cliffs now instead of in the 2030s. In other words, a balanced
budget amendment would serve as an effective backdoor way to
immediately cut Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Rather than spend time on an unworkable and economically
calamitous amendment to the Constitution, policymakers should
focus on policies that improve the fiscal trajectory while
meeting the public's wise priorities about what government
should do.
Thank you, and I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Duke follows:]
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Mr. Roy. Thank you, Mr. Duke.
We will now proceed under the five-minute rule with
questions. I will now recognize the gentleman from California,
Mr. McClintock.
Mr. McClintock. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Democrats spent quite a bit of time telling us the
debt's ballooned because of Republican tax cuts. Let me put
their concerns to rest. Three numbers tell you everything you
need to know about the Federal deficit: 46, 64, and 94.
The Democrats blame excessive spend--46 percent, by the
way, is the percentage of increase in inflation population
combined over the last 10 years, 46 percent increase of
inflation and population. Sixty-four percent is the increase in
revenues in the same period. That's after the Trump tax cuts,
after the big beautiful bill; we're taking in 64 percent more
revenue than 10 years ago with only a 46 percent increase of
inflation and population.
The third number is what's killing us, 94, that's the
increase in spending in the same period. The Democrats like to
blame Republicans for excessive spending, but the only
opposition I have ever heard from the Democrats on spending
issues is that we're not spending enough money fast enough.
At the end of World War II, our Nation staggered under a
similar debt relative to GDP that we have today, as Mr. Walker
noted. We'd exhausted our resources then, fighting the most
terrible war in human history. The question occurs; how do we
get out of that? Well, not by tax increases, as the Democrats
propose. Quite the contrary.
In Fiscal Year 1946, Democrat Harry Truman cut the Federal
budget from $85 billion a year down to $30 billion a year.
Almost two-thirds. He slashed Federal income tax rates. He
abolished the excess profits tax. He fired 10 million Federal
employees. It was called war demobilization. The Keynesians of
the time predicted a 25 percent unemployment rate and a second
great depression. Instead, we had the post-war economic boom.
We already know how to fix the economy. The problem is
summoning the discipline to do so.
For the last eight sessions, I've introduced a
constitutional amendment on this subject. It's 27 simple words:
The U.S. Government may not increase its debt except for a
specific purpose by legislation adopted by three-fourths of the
membership of both Houses of Congress.
To me, that is the simplest way of addressing the issue and is
essentially what Thomas Jefferson had suggested we needed in
the Constitution at the time of its adoption.
Such an amendment taking effect 10 years from ratification
would naturally require both a balanced budget and a prudent
reserve to accommodate fluctuations of revenues and routine
contingencies. It would trust that three-fourths of Congress
will be able to recognize a genuine emergency when it sees one
and that one-fourth of Congress will be strong enough to resist
borrowing for lighter transient reasons. Whether it is this or
some other mechanism, it seems to me that it is absolutely
crucial.
Now, we have a modern-day example of this, and that's
Switzerland. Switzerland adopted a debt break in its
Constitution almost 25 years ago. Eighty-five percent of Swiss
voters approved it. Today, Switzerland's total debt is 30
percent of GDP.
Mr. Walker, what is the percentage today in the United
States?
Mr. Walker. Well, debt held by the public is about 100
percent, but if you take the total debt, which includes the
debt held by the trust funds it's 123 percent and rising.
Mr. McClintock. Yes.
Mr. Walker. As you properly pointed out, we were going down
after World War II; we're now going up and we're not at war.
Mr. McClintock. Because we cut spending dramatically and we
cut taxes, and that produced an economic expansion, as it did
under Democrat John F. Kennedy, and as it did under Republican
Ronald Reagan and Republican Donald Trump.
Anyway, 100 percent. Just debt held by the public, 100
percent; Switzerland is 30 percent. Switzerland's running a
slight budget surplus this year, I understand.
What are we to take away from this experience?
Mr. Walker. Well, Switzerland and certain other countries,
including Germany and Sweden, have recognized that they need a
constitutional constraint to maintain fiscal sanity.
I might note, the debt ceiling is a bad joke. It's done
nothing to be able to constrain the growth of government or
mounting debt burdens. It's a political football. Statutory
approaches to try to be able to bring fiscal discipline,
whether it be Gramm-Rudman or anything else, have not stood the
test of time.
The only thing that can bind current and future Congresses
and Presidents is a constitutional amendment. Remember what
Washington said, among other things, ``avoid excessive debt.''
We have not--we have not heeded his warning.
Mr. McClintock. Thank you.
Mr. Roy. I thank the gentleman from California. I'll now
recognize the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, Mr.
Raskin.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Yes, it was Democrat Harry Truman who did all that, who
made the requisite cuts in Federal spending after World War II,
and it was Democrat Bill Clinton who gave us record surpluses
in the 1990s. All this is possible with the proper political
focus and discipline.
Mr. Duke, say you've got a lawless President who wages war
without a congressional declaration of war, takes emoluments
from foreign kings, princes, and governments without
congressional consent, impounds money appropriated by Congress
for certain purposes and uses them illegally for other
unauthorized purposes. Is there anything in the proposals for a
balanced budget constitutional amendment that would prevent a
reckless President who disregards the Constitution from
bulldozing the budget and just going right through those
barriers and spending us into oblivion?
Mr. Duke. Not that I have seen.
Mr. Raskin. If there's not any real constitutional
guardrail there, it seems to me like this is symbolic politics,
a kind of window dressing to cover up the fact that people just
have not had the political discipline and will to balance the
budget.
Is it true that, as in the case raised by the gentleman
from California with President Truman and President Clinton, is
it true that the budget deficits have gone down more under
Democratic Presidents and the budget has been balanced more
often than it has been with Republican Presidents?
Mr. Duke. Certainly, in the post-war period.
Mr. Raskin. OK. What is it that we should be doing in to
get our friends focused on actually balancing the budget and
not adding trillions to the debt, as President Trump did in his
first administration and as he's been doing again with the
massive tax breaks to the wealthy?
Mr. Duke. The first best would--to get into a time machine
and not do the bill that they passed last July. That would be
the first best. Second best would be to repealing it and
starting from scratch. That would be where we could start.
One idea, for example, there was that you could cut the
cost of the expiring tax cuts in half by just not extending
them for households making over $400,000. Then, you could
offset that cost, the $2 trillion remaining cost for the tax
cuts under $400,000, by raising taxes on the wealthy and
corporations. That's just one of the parts for dealing with the
fiscal cliff that basically President Trump and Republican
Congress set up in 2017.
Mr. Raskin. Well, what do you make of the notion that
President Trump's tariffs--which may be struck down as
unconstitutional, of course--but that in the meantime they will
make up the problems in the Federal budget deficit for us, they
will reduce the deficit? Does that make sense?
Mr. Duke. Yes. They're big and they are raising real money.
The CBO thinks they raised about $2.5 trillion, which is less
than the $3.4 trillion cost of One Big Beautiful Bill. I'd note
that the sense to which Donald Trump has done any sort of work
on deficit reduction, the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, as large
as they are, are smaller than the increases in tariffs, which
shows that even President Trump is kind of admitting that
revenue is the solution here. We should just have smarter taxes
than ones that cause people to pay more at Costco and Walmart
and ask the wealthy to pay their fair share instead of doing
illegal tariffs.
Mr. Raskin. Yes. What do you think about the notion that we
should have an Article V constitutional convention to pass this
balanced budget amendment?
Mr. Duke. You put it best yourself, why go through that
rigmarole, and why can't Congress and the President just do
that right now. They have the power to do it.
Mr. Raskin. Aren't there special dangers with causing--or
calling an Article V constitutional convention? Of course, we
haven't had an Article V convention. We've always done it by a
two-thirds vote in the House and the Senate and three-quarters
of the States ratifying. Calling a constitutional convention,
like the one we had in Philadelphia, would lead to potentially
every other manner of amendment that our colleagues have
favored, including an anticon-stitutional choice human life
amendment, a school prayer amendment, a flag desecration
amendment, and so on.
Would there be any way to control it once we're back in the
Rawlsian original position of a constitutional convention?
Mr. Duke. No. I think it's a whole bag of worms.
Mr. Raskin. Well, thank you for that. I yield back to you,
Mr. Chair.
Mr. Roy. I thank Ranking Member Raskin. I'll now recognize
the gentleman from Kentucky for five minutes.
Mr. Massie. I'm all for balanced budgets. I built this debt
badge, and I wear it to try and instill at least some sense of
urgency among my colleagues. I gave one to every freshman
Member of Congress, and the only Member who wears one is a
Democrat because he wants to show how much the debt's going up
under the Republicans, and he has a fair point.
The balanced budget amendment is one of those things that
sounds good on the surface, but it's the exceptions that are
written into it that get you. In fact, I voted against the
balanced budget amendment when it came to the floor several
years ago. I'll tell you why. It said that if Congress, if both
Chambers of Congress voted it with at least 60 percent of the
Members, they can undo the balanced budget amendment. That was
the exception. Well, just a few legislative days prior to
voting on the balanced budget amendment, we had just passed an
omnibus with over 60 percent of the House voting for it and
obviously over 60 percent of the Senate voting for it.
When Mr. Biggs, our colleague on the Judiciary Committee,
offered a balanced budget amendment, he suggested the threshold
should be two-thirds. I went back and looked from 2016 until
2026 at all the CRs that have passed the House and the Senate
and all the omnibus bills that have passed the House and the
Senate, and it turns out that 11 of the 16 CRs passed with more
than two-thirds vote in the House, and 14 of the 16 CRs passed
with more than two-thirds vote in the Senate. The results are
similar for the omnibus bills. I believe my colleague here, Mr.
McClintock, has suggested a three-quarters threshold.
What does a three-quarters threshold get you? Well, in
2024, the CR passed with 77 percent of the House, and 77
percent of the House in the next CR, 72 percent of the House,
74 percent of the House, 78 percent of the House, and, finally,
in 2025, not too long ago here, the American Relief Act, the
second CR of 2025, 84 percent of the House voted for that. That
sucker wasn't balanced. What about in the Senate? Eighty-five
percent. There's literally almost no threshold you could put in
there that they couldn't override and haven't overridden
already.
Mr. Walker, do you want to address that?
Mr. Walker. Yes. Thank you, sir. First, you have to define
what type of unexpected events can cause there to be a
potential exception to the rule, and then you have to have a
high enough threshold combined with those unexpected events to
be able to limit it. In addition to that, you have to say it's
for year by year. In other words, you don't just get a pass;
it's year by year.
With regard to the convention, this is not a constitutional
convention. The Federalist papers make it very clear that the
Founders intended there to be Article V limited conventions.
There are several safeguards to deal with your question,
Mr. Raskin. First, a majority of the applications back in 1979
and today are fiscal responsibility only. There's State
delegate legislation--
Mr. Massie. Let me followup, Mr. Walker--
Mr. Walker. Yes, sir. Go.
Mr. Massie. --on something you said, do you have to specify
the exemptions, and one of those is war.
Mr. Massie. I have tongue-in-cheek remarked that at least
this would get Congress to declare wars again because there is
an exception if you declare a war. This gives me some concern
because I have watched them play budget gimmicks here with
something called Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO). It is
supposed to be for emergencies or for things that came up--
contingencies, not expected--but they have used it to fund the
basic defense of the United States to replenish stockpiles and
whatnot.
Forgive me if I am very suspicious of specific exemptions
because I have seen those--they were statutory, not
constitutional--but I have seen them abused here in the House
of Representatives. The only thing that really works is you
have got to elect people who are serious about balancing the
budget. The result of the Big Beautiful Bill and the CR and
everything that has passed since then is that this year, we
have increased spending $200 billion, and next year, we will
increase spending over more than $200 billion.
My colleagues are--my Republican colleagues and especially
my Democrat colleagues--but this whole place is unserious about
balancing the budget, and the reason--and if you give them any
exemption, they will use it. The reason, honestly, they are not
that serious about it is because they can get reelected every
time by telling people they can cut their taxes and increase
spending and things are going to turn out fine. Well, that is
not the case.
With that, I see my time has expired.
Mr. Roy. With that, I thank the gentleman from Kentucky,
and I recognize the gentlelady from Washington.
Ms. Jayapal. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I love following Thomas Massie because he is very
consistent, and I appreciate that. Because we can disagree on a
whole host of things, but if you are consistent, it makes
sense.
I just find it really interesting that we are spending our
time on the Constitution Subcommittee talking about a balanced
budget amendment right after everyone on the other side except
for Mr. Massie voted for a bill that dramatically increased the
national debt. There are lots of other things that this
Committee should be working on rather than this.
The last time--the Ranking Member of the Full Committee
said this. The last time there was a balanced budget was in the
1980s under a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, and that was
achieved both by increasing taxes and revenue--taxes on the
wealthiest and revenue--and decreasing spending and cutting
defense spending. This last big, beautiful betrayal bill
actually did the opposite. It reduced revenue by giving massive
tax breaks to billionaires and corporations, and it increased
defense spending, and it did all of that on the backs of
cutting healthcare for tens of millions of Americans.
When we talk about this issue, we should remember that, in
his first term, President Trump followed Republican Presidents
like George W. Bush. He increased defense spending. He passed
steep tax cuts for billionaires and corporations under his 2017
tax scam. In fact, in 2023, Americans For Tax Fairness reported
that the richest 748 Americans' wealth topped a record-high $5
trillion, up 77 percent since those tax cuts were passed, and
that the debt caused by those Trump tax cuts were then used by
Republicans as an excuse to cut services.
Then this year, instead of letting those tax cuts for the
wealthiest expire, what did Republicans do? They made those tax
cuts permanent and then added some more in. That gave the
wealthiest Americans another five trillion in tax giveaways. As
I mentioned, defense spending went up by another $150 billion,
more enormous amounts of money poured into the Department of
Homeland Security to send all these masked ICE agents into our
streets to kidnap and deport people and terrorize communities
and give massive profits to for-profit detention centers.
The big, bad betrayal bill is what I call it, betrayal of
the American people, betrayal of working families--increased
the deficit by $3.4 trillion over the next 10 years on the
backs of working families while slashing $1.1 trillion for
Medicaid, food assistance, other critical health programs. Now,
Republicans have refused to extend the ACA tax credits so 22
million Americans can afford health insurance, even though
doing so would cost less than four percent of the cost of the
tax cuts for the wealthiest. Just make this make sense for me.
I am going to turn to you, Mr. Duke. Deficits are made up
of two parts, right? Is that correct?
Mr. Duke. That is correct.
Ms. Jayapal. Revenues and expenses?
Mr. Duke. You got them.
Ms. Jayapal. OK. I just wanted to make sure. Can a balanced
budget be achieved by the Federal Government just by decreasing
spending?
Mr. Duke. It could be done mathematically by dramatically
increasing poverty, causing millions of Americans to lose
health insurance and not be able to afford groceries. It is
mathematically possible, but it is very unwise.
Ms. Jayapal. To Mr. Massie's point, do we need a
constitutional amendment to create a balanced budget?
Mr. Duke. Bill Clinton certainly didn't.
Ms. Jayapal. Bill Clinton didn't. Yet, Republicans have
done the exact opposite. As I mentioned, they increased the
deficit, handed out tax breaks, and now they want--this is
really rich--a supermajority vote to increase revenue or raise
the debt limit but not a supermajority vote to decrease revenue
or lower the debt limit.
What effect would this one-way ratchet have on the payment
of Federal benefits like Social Security?
Mr. Duke. Sure. Anytime a Congress comes that wants to cut
spending, they can do it, and any Congress that then tries to
reverse it by raising revenue would not be able to do it. It
would be a one-way ratchet where benefits, services, and
eventually Social Security and Medicare find themselves on the
chopping block because there is just not much room left.
Ms. Jayapal. People feel like this is a rigged economy
because it is a rigged economy. It is rigged for the
wealthiest, and people across the country are seeing this now.
That is why Donald Trump's poll ratings are as low as they have
ever been in this term and almost as low as right after January
6th. Because people can't afford health insurance. They can't
afford basic food. They can't afford to live. Meanwhile, a very
small group of people at the top are just having it big, and
this is just another way to continue that cycle. I oppose it,
and I yield back.
Mr. Roy. I thank the gentlelady from Washington.
I now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina.
Mr. Harris. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to all of you
on the panel for your expertise and for being a part of this
hearing, a very, very important issue that I think a lot of us
have talked about and shared for a long time.
We all know that unsustainable debt has placed this country
on a collision course with financial disaster and that a
balanced budget amendment might save us from that fate, and I
would really like to hear our witnesses on what factors they
think make a strong balanced budget amendment that does not
bear any unintended consequences. As a freshman here, I have
had the opportunity to look at six different constitutional
amendments that have been introduced in this 119th Congress,
and I want to start by addressing the issue of when a balanced
budget ought to take effect.
Mr. Couchman, what are the pros of a balanced budget
amendment taking effect for the budget year immediately after
it is ratified?
Mr. Couchman. To require the balance of the budget
immediately would require relatively large changes in spending
and revenue policies. It would not give people as much time to
adapt and plan, which is why I recommend 10 years--a glide path
of 10 years after ratification, which would probably take 2-3
years.
Mr. Harris. OK. Because I understand, of the six that have
been introduced, only one gives Congress time to pass the
balanced budget and the other five require Congress to pass the
balanced budget the Fiscal Year after the amendment is adopted.
Some balanced budget amendments have provisions that allow
deficit spending during a declared war, national security
threats, or natural disasters.
Mr. Couchman, should a balanced budget amendment contain
these exceptions in your opinion?
Mr. Couchman. Yes, sir. Every balanced budget requirement
or debt limit requirement must have a safety valve. There are
emergencies of many types that come up. Two-thirds is the
standard supermajority for congressional action in the
Constitution. Three-fourths does apply, but that is only in the
context of ratifying proposed amendments.
Mr. Harris. OK. Mr. Walker, what about you?
Mr. Walker. Clearly, it cannot be effective immediately. In
my view, I prefer a debt-to-GDP approach where you do two
things:
(1) You set a credit card limit, which is constitutional.
Not the debt ceiling, which is a bad joke.
(2) You have a target of lower debt-to-GDP than today
because we are already too high, 10-15 years out, with specific
targets or triggers to be able to make sure that we get there.
Doing it immediately makes no sense. We need to really have a
phased-in approach.
Mr. Harris. OK. We all know--and this has already been
alluded to today--that there are two ways to balance the
budget: Raise taxes or cut spending.
Ms. Madni, could you explain--you made a great point in
your opening comments about the spending and not revenue as a
problem that needs to be addressed. Can you expand on that a
little more?
Ms. Madni. Sure. Absolutely, sir. That the answer is quite
simple. When we are looking at the math, we know that revenues
are not catching up to where we are in terms of outlays. To me,
that indicates that the Federal Government is spending more
than we bring in.
Every constituent that you have sits around their dinner
table and is expected to balance their budget and figure out
what they can actually spend within their means. We are quite
simply not doing that as a country, and the result of that is
that our deficit is ballooning. We are increasing our debt year
after year.
There are several instances of rampant waste that I think
that the average American would be astounded to learn about.
For example, there are several billion dollars' worth of waste
going to things like green energy projects in Honduras, climate
resilience in Honduras. It is about $24 million. Simple items
like this actually do stack up.
Then, when you start to think about the last major welfare
reform--which your colleague, Ms. Jayapal, pointed out was a
significant part of the President's 1996 balance--what you see
there is that he actually did also contribute significant
energy to reducing spending. It has to be a part of the
picture. Then, it was about $100 billion in today's dollars
worth of spending cuts to welfare. Now, in the One Big
Beautiful Bill Act, about a trillion dollars of that is what we
are seeing.
It is really important to note that Medicaid is still
growing after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. There is a
significant impact. In fact, it grew 31 percent even after the
reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It is not that
revenues are the problem. It is that the spending trajectory of
the country is continuing to go far beyond the pace of what we
could ever bring in.
Mr. Harris. Gotcha. Well, thank you very much. We saw some
of that in the first few months of this administration when
DOGE began to do its work, where the American public was rising
up and saying that these cuts were something that needed to
happen.
With that, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Mr. Roy. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina. I now
recognize the gentleman from Colorado.
Mr. Neguse. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for convening this
hearing. Thank you to all the witnesses for your testimony,
both written and your answers to the questions that have been
propounded so far.
Ms. Madni, I wasn't planning on asking this question of
you, but I want to followup on the comment that you made just
recently, and your summation focused on spending. Every
academic, every economist that I have come across in the last
six months have all agreed that the Republican tax bill, the
so-called Big Beautiful Bill, increased the deficit. I assume
you don't dispute that.
Actually, let me read this to you, and then you can answer.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget--right--has
estimated that this bill will add $2.4 trillion to primary
deficits over the next decade and $3 trillion to the deficit,
including interest. Do you contest that?
Ms. Madni. Thank you for your question, sir. I actually
reject the premise of this question because, when you are
adding to the deficit, you also have to think about what the
mechanisms is doing so. As I mentioned in my opening statement,
it is not just about balance on paper. This is not a simple
accounting mechanism. You also have to take into account the
economic impact of the choices Congress is making.
Mr. Neguse. Sure. I understand that argument. Republicans
on the dais here have made that argument.
What you are essentially saying is that Elon Musk, the
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Mr. Massie, any
Republican critics in good faith of this bill are wrong, that
this calculation that the Committee for a Responsible Federal
Budget has delineated and produced is inaccurate and incorrect.
I don't know how you can make that argument. I suspect that
your colleagues here sitting alongside you would not make that
argument, but maybe I am wrong.
Mr. Couchman, I have seen some of your material previously
in which you have amplified the Committee for a Responsible
Federal Budget. I don't think you have taken issue with them in
the past. Do you contest their analysis here? They are wrong?
Mr. Couchman. I worked at the Committee for a Responsible
Budget before this, and there are times that I agree with them
and sometimes I disagree.
Mr. Neguse. I know. Sure.
Mr. Couchman. On this matter, it really comes down to how
you think about the statutory baseline and whether you think
that was realistic, and as we saw from the bond market, the
public, and policymakers, that was not an accurate reflection
of where folks expected revenue policy to be.
Mr. Neguse. How far off are they? Is it $2.4 trillion over
the next decade? You are saying that this bill didn't
increase--will not increase the deficit at all?
Mr. Couchman. Relative to the statutory baseline, yes, but
relative to what the bond markets and policymakers were
projecting, no. It actually decreased deficits. Vice President
Harris proposed extending most of these tax provisions as well
to prevent the largest tax increase on the American people in
history.
Mr. Neguse. Well, again, that it is rich, in my view, for
organizations who predicate their existence on making the case
for deficit-neutral policies and for decreasing the debt, so on
and so forth, to enthusiastically endorse a bill in which a
variety of experts, including conservative ones, all attest
that that particular legislation actually increases the
deficit. It is quite convenient now for Americans for
Prosperity, just by way of example, to now conclude that the
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is wrong and that,
in the case of Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill, no, you
have called it incorrectly. This in fact decreases the deficit.
That argument is disingenuous, frankly, sir.
In any event, you are entitled to your opinion, obviously,
but I concur with Mr. Massie, and I applaud Mr. Massie for
having the courage among Republicans to actually make an
intellectually honest argument and to stand by his principles
and vote against the bill because of what it will do to the
deficit. Again, that is my view.
Mr. Couchman. Sound budgeting is important to American
prosperity. There is no question about it.
Mr. Neguse. What was that?
Mr. Couchman. Sound budgeting is important to American
prosperity.
Mr. Neguse. It doesn't feel like it. If it was important to
you all, then you would have opposed this bill. You would have
said, you know what, we ought to make the case for an extension
of these various different tax credits and tax breaks that were
embedded in that bill, but supporting the bill wholesale, your
colleagues at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget--
your former colleagues, I should say--I suspect they are very
disappointed because that they put forward a very honest
treatise on this bill's impact.
I can see that your colleague here, Mr. Walker, would like
to jump in, so feel free.
Mr. Walker. I used to be on the board for Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget.
Mr. Neguse. Sure.
Mr. Walker. It all depends on what assumptions you use, but
there are more people believe that it added to the deficit than
not, OK?
Mr. Neguse. Correct.
Mr. Walker. Let me just note that things--
Mr. Neguse. I appreciate you conceding reality, sir.
Mr. Walker. No, that is right.
Mr. Neguse. That is all I was asking of the other two
witnesses.
Mr. Walker. One last thing. Things have been out of control
since 2002--
Mr. Neguse. Sure.
Mr. Walker. --and both parties have controlled the Congress
since 2002, and both parties have had Presidents since 2002.
Mr. Neguse. I hear you.
Mr. Walker. This is a bipartisan problem.
Mr. Neguse. Here is the difference, Mr. Walker. I
appreciate that candor. I appreciated the Chair's indulgence
for just a few seconds. Because I completely appreciate that
point. You, sir, have spent a great deal of time in your career
making the case that both parties have to ultimately help bring
their fiscal house in order.
The issue I take umbrage with are witnesses who advocate
solely on the basis that Democrats are responsible, and they do
that simultaneous to supporting a bill that increases the
deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next decade so that my
daughter and future generations to come are saddled with debt
for the next 25 years.
In any event, I digress. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Roy. I thank the gentleman from Colorado.
I now recognize the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Onder.
Mr. Onder. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the
witnesses for being here today.
Republicans have warned for years about the dangers of
unchecked Federal spending, but because of the Biden
Administration's unprecedented spending spree and the
Democrats' refusal to return spending to pre-COVID levels even
after adjusting for inflation, we are now at a defining
crossroad.
This first chart shows a simple overview of our Federal
debt-to-GDP ratio. Within just a few years, debt held by the
public will surpass every previous record in our Nation's
history, even the levels reached during World War II. Here we
are. We are up here at World War II levels of debt-to-GDP
ratio.
The second chart breaks down the annual Federal spending by
category. One change that I believe should alarm every American
is down here in the orange at about 6, 7 o'clock--is the slice
of our Federal budget that is devoted to paying interest on our
debt. We are now at 13 percent. At $881 billion--which it is
even larger than today--that exceeds the defense budget, it
exceeds Medicare and the ACA, and it--I am sorry--Medicaid and
the ACA, and it exceeds Medicare. This is truly a warning sign.
Two years ago--yes, two years ago we passed up the defense
budget in our interest spending.
Just a few questions. Ms. Madni, you mentioned Medicaid
spending increasing even after the One Big Beautiful Bill and
the reforms there such as removing requirement to work, keeping
illegal aliens off welfare, checking eligibility. I believe we
really should keep that in mind as we think about extending
enhanced COVID ACA credits 2.5 years after the official end of
COVID.
Could you explain how our growing deficit and debt is
affecting--I believe Mr. Walker pointed out that Moody's
downgraded America's credit rating this year. Can you explain
how the growing debt and deficit crisis affect our credit
rating?
Ms. Madni. Sure. Absolutely. I will take the first
question, and then we will go from there. Keep me on track if I
miss something from you.
Mr. Onder. Yes, sorry about that.
Ms. Madni. Yes. To go back to your question on Medicaid
spending after OBBB, following the One Big Beautiful Bill Act,
I would just say that, to describe Medicaid reforms included in
that bill as cuts--that is just Washington math, plain and
simple.
Mr. Onder. That is right. Only in D.C. does continued
increase in spending constitute a cut.
Ms. Madni. Absolutely. In Fiscal Year 2024, we were
spending $618 billion on Medicaid. A 31 percent increase over
the budget window after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would
get to $807 billion. That is actually nearly double what our
Medicaid spend was from the pre-COVID level of $409 billion.
That is your first question.
Mr. Onder. Incredible. It is just factually wrong that we
cut Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill
Ms. Madni. Correct That is correct.
Mr. Onder. No matter what the Democrats tell us, no matter
what the hospital lobbyists tell us--yes.
Ms. Madni. If you believe that math is math then you are
right.
Mr. Onder. Yes. Right.
Ms. Madni. That it is also important that we talk a little
bit about the other part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
because I was criticized by your colleague and I didn't have a
chance to respond here.
When I say that I reject the premise that the tax cuts
included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act don't increase the
deficit, what I was trying to tell the Congressman is that
those are not new tax cuts.
Mr. Onder. Right.
Ms. Madni. These are things that the American people are
already experiencing.
Mr. Onder. Right. What the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was
to prevent a tax hike on the American people.
Mr. Onder. Exactly. I think sometimes--to some extent, we
Republicans that are messaging largest tax cut in American
history, that is not exactly true. What we did is prevented a
multitrillion-dollar tax increase, which is what my Democrat
colleagues seem to advocate.
Ms. Madni. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Onder. OK.
Ms. Madni. Then you asked me as well--I recognize you only
have a few seconds left.
Mr. Onder. Yes. Go ahead.
Ms. Madni. You asked me as well about how our interest
payments are negatively impacting our standing in terms of our
credit. Well, that couldn't be more clear. You pointed out that
our interest payments are outpacing our payments for defense.
They are outpacing our economy. They are outpacing everything
that is sustainable. We are making a $1.22 trillion interest
payment in the next fiscal year, and that alone, as I mentioned
at the beginning of this Congress, is larger than the GDPs of
every country in the world except for 16, excepting the United
States, of course. That is going to naturally have an impact
when credit rating agencies are considering whether or not we
can actually meet our obligations.
Mr. Onder. No wonder young people can't afford to buy homes
because they are competing with the Federal Government for
borrowing.
Ms. Madni. Precisely.
Mr. Onder. Thank you very much for your testimony. I yield
back.
Mr. Roy. I thank the gentleman from Missouri. I now
recognize the gentlelady from Vermont.
Ms. Balint. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We are talking today about a constitutional requirement
that spending has to equal revenue, but what Republicans are
not saying--but which we all know--is that this means you are
going to have to cut Social Security, Medicare, food
assistance, and other programs that regular people rely on. As
a Member of the Budget Committee, I have spent three years--
three years--on conversations like this and all the while
watching Republicans continue to balloon the national debt to
finance tax cuts for people who don't actually need them. Can
we all finally admit once and for all that tax cuts do not
trickle down? All you have to do is ask regular people who
can't afford their groceries right now.
Mr. Duke, thanks so much for being here. I want to talk
about what Republicans mean when they talk about a balanced
budget amendment. From my perspective, they mean that you are
going to have to make steep cuts to benefits, while rewarding
the wealthy with additional tax cuts. A balanced budget
amendment always sounds so simple, but the Federal budget is
not actually like a household budget. It is not. It doesn't
matter how many times we say it. It is not.
Mr. Duke, is it possible that this proposed constitutional
requirement would endanger Social Security?
Mr. Duke. Absolutely it would.
Ms. Balint. Tell me a little bit more. How would it do
that?
Mr. Duke. We have the baby boomers. They worked for a bunch
of years. That created surpluses into the Social Security and
Medicare trust funds, right? Now, we are drawing them down as
they are retiring, and those trust funds are scheduled to
exhaust in the 2030s. A balanced budget amendment would apply
to the whole government. Those accumulated surpluses from 10-15
years ago wouldn't count anymore, right?
Basically, what would need to happen for Social Security
and Medicare to continue to pay 100 percent benefits is you
would need to run a bigger surplus in the rest of the
government, right? Which is really, really, really hard to do
and frankly not realistic, right?
Ms. Balint. Yes.
Mr. Duke. Social Security just can't have its trust fund.
That basically moves the problem we were going to face 10 years
from now about Social Security and Medicare trust funds
exhausting from the 2030s to now.
Ms. Balint. Yes. it is very serious. I can think of a
simpler way to protect essential programs like Social Security.
Is it true that we could just raise taxes on billionaires and
corporations?
Mr. Duke. That certainly would be one way to--
Ms. Balint. It is an option, right?
Mr. Duke. Yes. It certainly is an option.
Ms. Balint. It is an option. It is on the table. We already
have that power. Is that right?
Mr. Duke. According to Article I, yes.
Ms. Balint. Yes. Exactly. According to Article I, I am
going to get to that in just a minute.
What worries me so seriously about this conversation is
that this whole concept of a balanced budget amendment requires
us to actually support the Constitution that we have. You can't
have this amendment if you don't have respect for the
separation of powers, if you don't have respect for the powers
of the purse, if you don't have respect for the Constitution as
a whole, and under this Republican government, none of these
things currently exist.
My Republican colleagues have completely given up Congress'
Article I powers, letting the President do whatever he wants.
They have stepped back and let the Executive Branch run wild.
We have invoked the Founders a lot today, and I can tell you
they would be disgusted by the Majority's willingness to cede
their power to this President.
President Trump and congressional Republicans have
completely abandoned constitutional governance by three coequal
branches. They have allowed the President to illegally refuse
to spend money as directed by Congress. They have conducted
absolutely zero oversight of misconduct and open corruption
across the agencies and the White House. We just spent a month
out of session because the Speaker would not stand up to our
President and protect our Article I powers.
Why do I care so much about the Article I powers? It is not
because of our power. It is because we represent the people. We
represent the people who want us to pass those policies that
actually benefit them, and we don't have that right now. This
whole conversation about going through this rigamarole of an
idea that has a snowball's chance in hell of ever coming to
fruition--when we could actually spend our time here protecting
our Article I powers.
I appreciate you being here. I appreciate all the
witnesses. I yield back.
Mr. Roy. I thank the gentlelady from Vermont. I will now
recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin.
Mr. Grothman. First, I would like to thank you very much
for holding this hearing. We are kind of in the middle of
appropriation bills here, and it is shocking to the degree
which my colleagues think that we are running huge surpluses
rather than we have to deal with deficits. It would be nice if
we get a balanced budget out of this, but at a minimum, we can
educate our colleagues as to what a dire situation we are in.
Ms. Madni, I will ask you a few questions as to where this
ship is headed. Do you know approximately right now--maybe it
is unfair to ask you without checking there--the percentage of
our budget that is borrowed?
Ms. Madni. I am sorry, sir. What? The percentage--
Mr. Grothman. The percentage of our budget that is
borrowed.
Ms. Madni. That is powered?
Mr. Grothman. Borrowed.
Ms. Madni. Borrowed. Oh, borrowed. I apologize. I couldn't
quite hear you. Far too much. If you just look at our interest
payments, that is really what you need to start thinking about.
In terms of what we are borrowing--
Mr. Grothman. I think we are borrowing--
Ms. Madni. --our deficit spend is $1.9 trillion.
Mr. Couchman. About a quarter of revenue is borrowed.
Mr. Grothman. Right. Twenty-six percent, which is kind of
shocking. Do you know how much we are spending on--the
percentage of all our budget--how much is already not on new,
neat stuff but just paying interest on the debt we have?
Ms. Madni. The percentage for interest only, you are
saying?
Mr. Grothman. Yes. Percentage of--
Ms. Madni. Yes, sir. The percentage that we are paying on
interest is 13 percent.
Mr. Grothman. OK. About a seventh of our budget already is
going not to Social Security or tanks or wasting money on a
Truman Scholarship program. I was just in a different hearing.
What a waste of money. Already 14 percent is interest.
Could you guys--any one of you--jump forward and tell me--
obviously, if you were an individual, you couldn't keep
borrowing 26 percent of every dollar you spend. Obviously, if a
seventh of what you are spending is already interest, you would
just--they would send you to debt counseling or something or
another.
How long can we go at this rate, and what is going to
happen when we can't go any longer?
Ms. Madni. We will start entering a fiscal spiral in the
2030s if we continue down this path. You mentioned earlier
appropriations and the fact that we are underway in that full-
year discussion right now.
One thing to keep in mind--of course, appropriations are
only 27 percent of our Federal budget, but even within that,
the Senate's proposed appropriations bills right now--the
remainder of them that were not already enacted--are $50
billion or more--because we haven't seen the full text of all
them--than what the House appropriations bills propose. That
alone is something that you could do to deal with immediately
the trajectory that we are on.
Obviously, $50 billion is not going to resolve our
trillions of dollars that we are currently in the hole for just
this year, $38.4 trillion overall, but it is important to start
building that muscle memory among your colleagues.
Mr. Couchman. To build on that, the point of budgeting is
to look at everything and see how we can do better, but that is
not what Congress does. Congress does appropriations. It is
important, but it is 26 percent of spending. We need to be
looking at all spending, all revenue, including tax
expenditures, getting all the Committees involved like
Wisconsin does.
Mr. Grothman. Just so you know, Mr. Couchman, I believe
irresponsible people around here like to rattle on about all
the mandatory spending, and they are right except for the
reason they rattle on about it. It is because they specifically
don't want to do what they should do on discretionary spending.
Mr. Couchman. Look at everything.
Mr. Grothman. Yes. Exactly. I am trying to think.
Mr. Walker. Congressman, can I provide something that would
be helpful?
Mr. Grothman. Sure.
Mr. Walker. What I found that resonates with the public is,
if you take the financial statements from the U.S. Government
as of September 30, 2024--if Uncle Sam was a person, you drop
eight zeros, and here is what you get: $50,000 in revenue,
$74,000 in expenses, $24,000 in the deficit, $1,240,000 in
total liabilities and unfunded promises, $57,000 in assets,
underwater $1,183,000. Would you lend money to that person?
By the way, the crisis is coming way earlier than the 2030s
from--based on prime economists on both sides of the aisle.
Mr. Grothman. I was standing on the floor a couple weeks
ago, and one of my colleagues who is a conservative by any
standard, I had thought--I still think he is--thought that this
was inevitable. Eventually, the U.S. is just going to have to
throw up their hands. Can we get out of this, do you believe,
given the people that are in Congress are pretty motley crew?
Mr. Couchman. There are an extraordinarily number--or an
extraordinary number of talented people on both sides that are
being held back by a broken process, and if we fix the process,
then we will get much more from Congress. Article I--Congress
should be the strongest branch. It is not. It is not coequal
branches. This is supposed to be the dominant branch, and it
has been curious to hear so many Members of Congress talking
about Presidents. Why not talk about this institution and
fixing this institution?
Mr. Grothman. Well, this institution is horrible. They are
horrible.
Mr. Couchman. Well, let's make it better.
Mr. Grothman. It is not the process. It is the people, I
believe.
Ms. Balint. You are part of it.
Mr. Walker. Not without a constitutional amendment. You
won't solve this problem without a constitutional amendment.
Mr. Grothman. OK. Thank you for giving me an extra 50
seconds.
Mr. Roy. I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin, and I
believe the gentlelady from Vermont has some consent requests.
Ms. Balint. I do. I ask unanimous consent to enter into the
record three tweets, the first from Mr. Kurt Couchman: ``The
claim that Trump's tariffs didn't cause inflation makes no
sense.''
Also, from Kurt Couchman, ``President Trump's steel and
aluminum tariffs are terrible for the metal-using industry jobs
in my rural Pennsylvania hometown.''
A retweet, ``It would be great if the Supreme Court saves
Trump and the GOP from themselves and kills the President's
ability to drive up costs on consumers by ending his
unconstitutional tariffs.''
Thank you. I ask unanimous consent to enter them into the
record.
Mr. Roy. Without objection, those will be entered into the
record. I now recognize the gentlelady from Pennsylvania, the
Ranking Member, Ms. Scanlon.
Ms. Scanlon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Clearly, we have
structural issues here with our debt, with our budgets. I
wanted to focus on the revenue side because that is a side that
doesn't seem to get enough attention, and I would start with
something that you talked about, Mr. Duke.
In this big bill that passed last summer, our colleagues
across the aisle have justified it as being necessary to avoid
a tax cut on the American people, when we know that most of it
was going to wealthier folks. You mentioned that if there had
been a cap on who got those--or a floor on who got those tax
cuts, it could have had a very different impact. Can you talk
about that?
Mr. Duke. Absolutely. The full cost of the tax cuts that
passed were about $4.5 trillion, but extending the expiring tax
cuts was four trillion. That is the pile we are working with
here. The cost of extending them for households making under
$400,000, on the other hand, was less than half that amount
according to analysis by the Treasury Department, right?
Offsetting the $4 trillion of costs would be really, really
hard to do. The $1.9 trillion, there are ways you can do that
on the revenue side too. That makes the job a lot easier. It is
just making sure that the two-percent of households making over
$400,000 don't get a tax cut. It would have made the job a
whole heck of a lot easier.
Ms. Scanlon. It is certainly not chump change.
Another thing that we have seen under this administration--
and it was mentioned by one of our colleagues--is the purported
savings by DOGE, but one of those big DOGEisms has been to
radically cut the IRS--the IRS which has a return on investment
of $5-$12 for every dollar spent there--and the laying off of
people who were supposed to go after the big dollar tax cheats.
Can you talk about how that would have an impact on our
revenue?
Mr. Duke. Yes. You spelled it outright that we could have
the perfect tax system that basically took care of our fiscal
trajectory in the Internal Revenue Code, but if there aren't
the people to enforce it, it doesn't matter because nobody is
going to pay their taxes, right?
The key thing is having the IRS, and that was a key
investment made under the Biden Administration to increase IRS
staffing, especially with a focus on households making over
$400,000 and large corporations. They have been systemically
laying off those units that go after those groups. That just
obviously mechanically will make it easier for those groups to
just not pay the taxes they owe. That increases the deficit.
Ms. Scanlon. Shockingly, they canceled the folks who were
going to go after the big spenders.
Programs like Social Security and Medicare are part of
America's contract with our citizens and part of a long-held
promise we have made to our country's seniors that people will
contribute their wages over a lifetime and earn benefit that
will be available when they become older or if they are
disabled.
Can you talk about how the balanced budget amendment that
is being proposed--amendments that are being proposed might
threaten those Social Security benefits?
Mr. Duke. Right. Social Security and Medicare outlays are
part of the government, right? It is just part of it. Balanced
budget amendments would basically treat those payments as part
of the Federal budget as a whole and so would be limited.
Now, we actually don't know a lot of the enforcement
mechanisms behind a lot of these amendments, so it is hard to
say exactly what would happen. The key thing is that those
programs are drawing down their trust funds they accumulated
when the baby boom was working, and unless we are running a
large enough surplus in the rest of the government, they would
not be able to tap those reserves to pay out the benefits owed
to people, right?
I guess you could just make massive cuts to other parts of
the government to keep those parts flowing. That is very
unlikely. They would be just as much at risk as the rest of the
government.
Ms. Scanlon. Of course, the fact that the tax cuts we have
seen over the last couple of decades have radically increased
income inequality, that also has undermined our Social Security
system because there are caps on who has to contribute. Once
again, folks on the lower end of the economic scale are paying
proportionately more than folks on the upper end.
I did want to request unanimous consent to enter into the
record an article entitled, ``How DOGE's Cuts to the IRS
Threaten to Cost More Than DOGE Will Ever Save.''
Mr. Roy. Without objection.
Ms. Scanlon. OK. Thank you, and I would yield back.
Mr. Roy. I thank the Ranking Member. I will now recognize
the gentleman from Texas for five minutes.
Mr. Gill. Thank you, Chair Roy. Thanks for holding this
hearing and especially for your fights over the past several
years to promote fiscal prudence in Washington and very boldly
standing up for the American taxpayers. We really appreciate
that.
It is not surprising to me that our colleagues across the
aisle are not in favor of a balanced budget amendment. It would
obviously stop them from spending money on their top
priorities, which we have learned this year are things like
transgender surgeries for foreigners, DEI scholarships in
foreign countries, Left-wing media outlets like NPR and PBS, it
would stop them from funding the NGO industrial complex that is
facilitated mass migration into our country, and all the
various other wasteful government programs that we have been
fighting to slash over the past year since I have been in
Congress at least. Those are precisely the types of programs
that I would like to see cut and why, among other reasons, that
a balanced budget would, in fact, be prudent.
Every dollar that we spend right now above what we take in
at revenue is money that our children and grandchildren are
going to have to pay back, and I for one don't want to and I
don't think that it is in any way moral to saddle my children,
my son or my daughter, with the debt to finance ridiculous
programs as we have been.
With that said, I want to thank the witnesses for being
here. I really appreciate y'all's time.
Ms. Madni, I agreed that--with you that achieving a
balanced budget requires a significant decrease in spending. Do
you know what the deficit was in 2019?
Ms. Madni. I am sure that you have it in front of you, sir,
so I am going to concede--
Mr. Gill. The $984 billion. Do you know what the deficit is
now?
Ms. Madni. It is not good.
Mr. Gill. Not good. A lot more than that, isn't it?
Ms. Madni. Yes. Absolutely, sir.
Mr. Gill. Do you know how much it is?
Ms. Madni. Yes. We are at $1.9 trillion.
Mr. Walker. Estimated to be $1.8 trillion.
Mr. Gill. There we go. $1.8 trillion?
Ms. Madni. I think it is actually $1.9 now.
Mr. Gill. Got it. During that time, we have seen spending
balloon and revenue not being able to keep up, of course. That
has resulted in nearly doubling the deficit in six years.
One of the things that we worked on as part of the tax
package that we passed earlier this year was reducing wasteful
spending. We cut spending by $1.5 trillion, the biggest
mandatory spending reduction in our country's history. I would
love to hear your thoughts on the work that we did as part of
that spending reduction. What portions of that do you think
were the most beneficial?
Ms. Madni. It is a little difficult for me to choose just
one piece of it that was the most beneficial, but I do think
that there were some significant wins. As we mentioned, we
prevented a tax hike on the American people and specifically
working families, so I would be remiss not to mention that. In
terms of your question on cuts, we eliminated $1.5 trillion in
Federal spending. That is going to reduce inflation
significantly.
One of the pieces of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that I
am most in favor of is that we really started refocusing
Medicaid on the vulnerable populations, and that included
reforms that reduced the ability of Medicaid dollars, Federal
dollars from taxpayers--of course, it is the taxpayer's money,
not the government's--from going toward illegal immigrants. We
also ensured that those who can work must work to access
Medicaid dollars. That is really important not just in terms of
our fiscal health as a Nation, but because these programs were
designed as safety net programs for the most vulnerable, and
this helps refocus them.
Mr. Gill. Yes. There has been some talk and we discussed
possibly doing a second reconciliation bill. What are a few
policy ideas that you think we should particularly focus on if
we do go in that direction?
Ms. Madni. I will stick with the Medicaid theme for a
little while, sir. One thing that we could do is lower or
eliminate the Federal match assistance percentage floor. Right
now, there is a statutory floor of 50 percent. We could reduce
that so that States who under the formula would receive less
from the Federal Government could. That could save us $400
billion. We could also repeal the Medicaid FMAP increase to the
States that initially declined expansion. That would save us
over $13 billion.
Another option would be reducing the enhanced FMAP match
for expansion populations. That was from the Affordable Care
Act. This, of course, is what gives the able-bodied, working-
age adults $9 for every $1 for the traditional population. If
we did that, it would save $700 billion.
Mr. Gill. Thank you, Ms. Madni.
Mr. Roy. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I now
recognize the gentlelady from Wyoming for five minutes.
Ms. Hageman. Well, thank you.
First, I would like to correct one of the statements made
by our colleague on the other side about who actually pays the
income taxes in this country. The top 10 percent of earners
bore responsibility for 76 percent of all income taxes paid,
and the top 25 percent paid 89 percent of all income taxes.
Altogether, the top 50 percent of filers earned 90 percent of
all income and were responsible for 98 percent of all income
taxes paid in 2021. It is very clear that the people who own
the majority of the money are also the ones that are
responsible for paying the income taxes in this country.
The Fiscal Year 2025 national debt currently stands at
around $1.78 trillion--that is what I was looking at just this
morning--and the national debt is at $38 trillion and counting.
In 2010, when I first started really kind of ringing the bell
about the debt and the deficit, the debt was $10 trillion. We
have added another 28 trillion, almost $30 trillion just in the
last 15 years. The U.S. now spends 13 percent of its budget on
interest on the national debt and more than current annual
spending on Medicare or the national defense.
Mr. Walker, understanding that the successful adoption of a
balanced budget amendment to the Constitution would inevitably
help rein in future annual spending, factoring in our existing
deficit and debt, I believe, merits some additional attention.
With our deficit just shy of the $2 trillion, how would the
implementation of a balanced budget amendment need to approach
this growing figure? What would we do with that growing figure,
with the deficit?
Mr. Walker. Well, first, I believe that the debt-to-GDP is
too high right now to promote future economic growth,
individual opportunity, et cetera. You need to do two things:
(1) You need to limit how much debt as a percentage of the
economy the country can take on, absent--limited in
extraordinary circumstances--a credit card limit, all right?
(2) Let's set a target for a lower debt-to-GDP that we want
to get to in 10-15 years and have mechanisms that can get us
there, if you will.
The American people know that we have a problem here. They
support that approach that I just articulated. In addition to
that, they recognize the problem is both spending and revenue.
When you look at it, you have to look at it as a percentage of
GDP. What percentage of spending to GDP? What percentage of
revenue? The American people support a three-to-one ratio,
three parts projected spending reduction to one part revenue
increase, but they believe that both are necessary.
Ms. Hageman. OK. Well, should the enactment of a balanced
budget amendment then provide for a transition period to
achieve a balanced budget over time, or could this be done
immediately?
Mr. Walker. No. It needs to have a transition. There is no
question.
Ms. Hageman. Do you know how long that transition should
be?
Mr. Walker. I would say 10 years as a general guideline.
Kurt Couchman has said the same.
Ms. Hageman. You also talked about exceptions. The COVID-19
so-called public health emergency was initiated by HHS in
January 2020. It was renewed 12 times, and it finally expired
in May 2023. The COVID-19 national emergency was initiated in
March 2020 and terminated in April 2023 following finally the
passage of a joint resolution of Congress. According to the
Treasury Department, from Fiscal Year 2019-2021, Federal
spending increased by about 50 percent in response to the
COVID-19 pandemic.
I believe that the Democrats spent over $5 trillion while
Joe Biden was in the White House addressing some of this.
According to USAspending.gov, approximately $4.7 trillion in
total budgetary resources was spent in response to COVID-19.
Another point of contention for a balanced budget amendment
is obviously the concept of exceptions, such as spending for in
times of war, national security, natural disasters, and other
emergencies.
Mr. Couchman, one of my concerns is how those exceptions
will be defined and implemented. Do you see that there could be
potential abuse both by Congress as well as the White House by
declaring national emergencies to circumvent any kind of budget
constraints that we may adopt with a balanced budget amendment?
Mr. Couchman. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,
and so Congress can't be content to simply pass a BBA and
assume that it will fix all the problems. I once believed that.
I was naive and young, and I now believe there has to be a
robust suite of statutory mechanisms to help Congress exercise
its legislative powers to check and balance itself, but also
the White House and, in some cases, perhaps the judiciary.
One other quick note about a balanced budget amendment
design. It is critical to avoid annual balance because tying
your revenue and spending together so closely when revenue is
so volatile will create all kinds of problems. In fact, the way
that Mr. Duke described--but there are other BBAs that don't
have that problem and also don't rely on defining spending as
outlays, which is when money leaves the Federal Government. If
you define it in general term, you can, through implementing
legislation, avoid all the problems that Mr. Duke talked about
with respect to business cycles and automatic stabilizers.
Ms. Hageman. Have you identified those and written them
down?
Mr. Couchman. Yes, ma'am, and they have--a big piece of
that has been introduced as legislation by Representative Tom
Emmer and then-Senator Mike Braun.
Ms. Hageman. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Roy. I thank the gentlelady from Wyoming. I will now
recognize the gentlelady from California for five minutes.
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Before I begin, I want to make sure that the American
people understand what we are talking about, that the deficit
is simply the gap between what the government spends and what
it brings in each year, and when that gap grows, we add to the
national debt. Balancing the budget would mean closing the gap
so we stop adding more debt.
Republicans call themselves fiscal hawks, but the numbers
tell a different story. Under President Trump's first term, the
deficit jumped from $665 billion to $3 trillion--from a ``B''
to a ``T''--and he has already added another $2 trillion this
term. Republicans added $155 billion to the national debt in a
single week. The national debt is now $38.336 trillion, driven
by GOP tax cuts that will cost $3.4 trillion through 2034 and
nearly $5 trillion if extended, and now we spend more than $1
trillion a year just on interest. That is the real fiscal
landscape that we are dealing with.
Anyone who is managing their house budget would fall over
backward if somebody was like, well, this is what you can't do.
You have to cut. This is what we are continuing to do. Spend
like it is water out of a tap.
Mr. Duke, nonpartisan analysis shows that the Bush and
Trump tax cuts are the primary drivers of long-term debt. It
will cost $3.4 trillion through 2034 and nearly $5 trillion if
extended. How central are these tax cuts to the debt trajectory
we are on right now?
Mr. Duke. Right. Basically, the debt would not be growing
anymore if we had not--if we reversed those tax cuts or if they
hadn't happened.
One analysis by a former colleague of mine calculated that,
of the increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio in the 21st century,
over half is attributable to the Bush and Trump tax cuts. Over
half. The rest is emergency spending like COVID and things like
that, but over half is attributable to those two policy
choices.
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. OK. Mr. Duke, while Republicans demand
cuts to food assistance and healthcare and childcare and
housing support, President Trump and his officials have spent
$300 million on a White House ballroom, more than $220 million
on golf travel, up to $45 million on a birthday military
parade, and $473 million on National Guard deployments. Trump
officials have also misused taxpayer resources, including a
$60-million FBI jet that Kash Patel used for personal travel
such as date nights and luxury hunting trips and a golf
vacation in Scotland, and the Coast Guard purchasing up to $200
million in Gulfstream G-700 private jets for Secretary Kristi
Noem. These folks are not using their mileage points for sure.
Given these expenditures, Mr. Duke, how would you
characterize the fiscal priorities reflected in these decisions
and, at the very least, are they putting American taxpayers
first?
Mr. Duke. Yes. The way I would think about it is that we
have done--put into law enormous cuts to SNAP and Medicaid that
help working families afford groceries and healthcare, right?
The way it is framed is there was no other choice. Just these
tax cuts and the bill they just did show that there was a
choice and they decided to opt for that. Budgets are about
priorities, and we can choose those priorities. Essentially, we
have chosen tax cuts for the largest estates worth over $30
million per couple over families trying to buy food and
groceries.
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Yes. Mr. Duke, Republicans also approved
a $40-billion bailout for Argentina, including a $20 billion
U.S. currency swap, even though Argentina has defaulted nine
times. Like, a huge, bigly credit risk. What financial risk
does that create for American taxpayers?
Mr. Duke. I don't think it takes a financial wizard to know
that investing in Argentina is not your best bet.
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. A losing proposition. Absolutely. Thank
you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
Mr. Roy. I thank the gentlelady from California. I will now
recognize myself for up to five minutes.
First, I want to appreciate the witnesses. We have had a
lengthy hearing with most of the Members of the Committee
showing up, so I appreciate your time and your willingness to
be here and for focusing on this issue.
Now, I will note this has regrettably mostly turned into a
Budget Committee hearing. Now, recognizing it is a balanced
budget amendment question so it necessarily raises those
issues, the question really before us is whether or not we
should amend the Constitution of the United States to have some
sort of structural changes to force Congress to be fiscally
responsible, recognizing that both sides, as you just saw--in
its normal, relatively petty way--point at each other for being
the cause of our deficit woes. The fact of the matter is both
sides--my Democratic colleagues and my Republican colleagues--
past, present, and future--are responsible for this.
Some reporting was done that when Mr. Musk came to visit
the Republican delegation in December a year ago--almost to the
date. Probably this week, I am guessing, if somebody Googles
it--that Mr. Musk was talking about DOGE and talking about the
savings, and many Republican colleagues went to the microphone
and lauded the prospects of cuts and spending restraint. I
stood up and I said, ``Mr. Musk, you are going to have no
problem identifying things to cut. You are going to produce a
great list, and we should do most of it.'' Your problem is
going to be everyone standing right next to me here, meaning
all of my colleagues. Now, I would have said that--it happened
to be a Republican meeting. I would have said that about my
Democratic colleagues as well.
Because, as my friend from Kentucky said, we are
constitutionally, as Members of Congress, hard-wired,
unfortunately, to want to effectively buy people's votes with a
never-ending array of spending programs, whether they are
meritorious or not. I often have people who come into my office
who ask for cancer subsidies. As a cancer survivor, I am
sympathetic. I often and almost always tell them no unless they
come in with a payment. Tell me how they are going to pay for
it. What else are they going to cut?
Same thing with my farmers. My farmers come in, and they
are looking for something--for extensions in the farm bill and
so forth, and I say, well, are you going to do anything about
the 80 percent of the farm bill that is SNAP and the extent to
which it is consuming the budget? Well, no, we can't. Well,
then I am not going to support it. Members of Congress have got
to actually--to the gentleman from Kentucky's point--do their
job.
The only thing I want to clarify here for the record
because we are here trying to talk about whether we should
amend the Constitution is--I just want to go down the witnesses
and say--and I know the answer, but it is yes or no. Do you
believe that the Constitution of the United States can and
should be amended to provide a mechanism to ensure that we are
not spending more than is coming in as a general matter?
Mr. Roy. Mr. Walker, do you believe it can and should be?
Mr. Walker. Yes, but I believe it ought to be debt to GDP.
Mr. Roy. Mr. Couchman.
Mr. Couchman. Yes, as nearly every advanced country has
already done.
Mr. Roy. Ms. Madni.
Ms. Madni. Yes, absolutely.
Mr. Roy. Mr. Duke.
Mr. Duke. Should not.
Mr. Roy. OK. Mr. Duke, you would maintain that position
even if it were only tax increases that were suggested as the
mechanism for ensuring that there was fiscal responsibility and
that inflows and outflows were equitable?
Mr. Duke. That's the job of Congress to do. I'm a 49ers
fan, I wouldn't approve--that's the job of Congress to do. I'm
a 49ers fan, I wouldn't approve of a law that said 49ers win
the Superbowl this year.
Mr. Roy. I always appreciate the consistency that you're
saying that it shouldn't be put in place even for tax increases
as opposed to spending restraint. What I would question, then,
is--and I don't even debate the merits of whether or not
Congress is shirking its responsibility on an annual basis. I
would only point out that it has done so for effectively
eternity.
The question here is, on behalf of the American people,
what do we do about it because as Mr. Massie said, ``well,
elect better people.'' Well, we never have. We elect 435 people
among Members of Congress who do the same thing every Congress,
which is spend more money than we take in as revenues.
My question is, again, do you not believe that there should
be some mechanism, something in place, perhaps, for example, if
you can't amend the Constitution, we don't think we should do
that, then should we have statutory restraints that say the
Members of Congress should not get paid, or Members of Congress
shouldn't be able to hold chairmanships if they vote for
budgets that are out of balance, or that Members of Congress in
the NRCC or the DCCC can't raise money, with all their special
perks and benefits to raise money for incumbent Members of
Congress who are crapping all over the American people by
mortgaging their children's future.
Is there anything that we can or should do as Congress to
restrain Congress from racking up deficits?
Mr. Duke. Congress has to want it. Your colleague, Mr.
Massie, laid it out, that it's on the Members of Congress to do
it. For example, statutory PAYGO. Right. Where we have a law
that says if you increase the deficit automatic across the
board--it always gets waived.
Mr. Roy. I get it, but we do this all the time. I'm not
going to go too far over my time, I'm trying to be indulgent to
some of my colleagues, so I'll give myself a few more seconds,
but we've done that over and over and over and over and over
and over again.
Mr. Duke. That's my point.
Mr. Roy. I know, but that's why we are here. I can sit here
and I can ask these guys questions, I know what their answer is
going to be, I know what your answer is going to be.
The point here is we didn't have an actual debate about
amending the Constitution to try to achieve something, or in
the absence of amending the Constitution, is in something this
body, the U.S. Congress can do to stop doing what we're doing,
which is killing our country with interest piling up around the
ears of our children. If answer is only that we've got to look
in the mirror and be better, I agree, but we never do. We
don't. Those of us that are dying on the Hill trying to fight
on the spending restraint, it's literally like pulling teeth to
get discretionary spending held flat while we try to grow the
economy out of it and deal with the fact that mandatory
spending has gone from, what, 4 percent in 1962 to, what, 24
percent now of the overall GDP, and discretionary has gone from
about 12 percent to 6 percent over that time. Mandatory
spending is consuming it.
Now, I've gone a minute over I would just say, look, I
appreciate the witnesses coming in. I appreciate their
expertise. I appreciate my colleagues. I would suggest that we
have got to do something to stop mortgaging our children's
future, and we've got to stop pointing across at each other and
saying, well, you did it and you did it. It's just simply not
true.
My Democratic colleagues give Clinton credit for the 1990s,
but want to ignore welfare reform and ignore the Republican
Congress that came in 1994-1995.
With that, I used up my time. Does anybody have any consent
requests. The gentlelady from California.
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. Well, I don't have a consent.
Mr. Roy. No, well, that didn't--
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. I just want to say something to you.
Mr. Roy. OK.
Ms. Kamlager-Dove. OK. Yes. First, I just want to commend
you on your comments and rules on the Score Act. OK.
Second, I do want to say that I do think some districts try
to elect better people. I do think that. I want to commend you,
you mentioned petty in your comments, and I was thinking I want
to commend you, Mr. Chair, for discouraging any petty, caustic,
childish outbursts in this hearing. I just want to thank you.
Mr. Roy. Well, I thank the gentlelady. I do think we owe it
to the future generations to actually solve this problem, and
we're not. If we want to amend the Constitution, let's have
that debate. If we don't, let's come up with another solution.
With that I will do whatever I'm supposed to do to conclude
the hearing. This concludes today's hearing. We thank the
witnesses for appearing before the Subcommittee. Without
objection, all Members will have five legislative days to
submit additional written questions for the witnesses, or
additional materials for the record. Without objection, the
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
All materials submitted for the record by Members of the
Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government can
be found at: https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent
.aspx?EventID=118721.
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